Tajima’s relative rate test.

The equality of evolutionary rate analysis between sequences A (OsMPK6) and B (ScMPK-A), with sequence C (CjMPK) were used for the analysis of fungal MAPKs with a few AtMAPKs and OsMAPKs as the representative of T-E-Y and T-D-Y motifs. Sequences A (DeMPK) and B (AtMPK1), with sequence C (CjMPK) were used for fungal MAPKs with all the representative AtMAPKs and OsMAPKs as per default selection on the MEGA program. In the case of all fungal MAPKs that contain the novel activation loop motif, the equality of the evolutionary rate was calculated between sequences A (687684) and B (91669), with sequence C (5240). A P-value less than 0.05 is often used to reject the null hypothesis of equal rates between lineages. The analysis involved 3 amino acid sequences. All positions containing gaps and missing datas were eliminated. Evolutionary analyses were conducted in MEGA5.